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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Some responses to the discussion.<BR>
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Re, David's to Margaret: perhaps I didn't understand the response but I would say, of course, and simplistically say yes:<BR>
the approach to creativity, research, art-making within an Arts Ph.D. program, and an M.F.A. Program, is to treat that "making (media) art is itself its own way of knowing." <BR>
In a sense, such a degree is a critique of traditional hierarchical notions of "knowledge," "academic value," "intelligence," and what is of worth and supported within culture.<BR>
<BR>
Regarding Tom's discussion, it is a huge challenge to achieve the kind of development needed for serious work in a two year MFA.<BR>
I have been teaching since the mid 80s as a theorist in an art department (previously at RISD), and the grads I am now working with at Rensselaer are, in most cases, older, and I would say, more developed as artists than I experienced during my early years of teaching. This may be a difference in programs, but it may be part of a "trend." <BR>
<BR>
Also in the age of the corporate university, our business models demand short, economically efficient terminal degrees. Three years is now recommended for a Ph.D. <BR>
<BR>
Given the type of work so many artists are exploring, the time needed to learn the tech or to get some background in another field, like science and technology studies, or biology has been one of the key factors leading to the development of the Ph.D.<BR>
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To address the core question of the doors being shut or open?<BR>
<BR>
If I have to choose either or, black or white, yes or no, open or closed,<BR>
I choose open.<BR>
<BR>
What would a Ph.D. offer? I hope it would give artists some of <BR>
the opportunities available to other fields: <BR>
the opportunity, at least for several years, to work within a creative community that <BR>
has resources, intellectual resources like libraries, technological resources, and, <BR>
perhaps most important, time to focus on their work.<BR>
<BR>
I hope it would not make the MFA obsolete, and it really couldn’t, not for decades, not for all situations, literally<BR>
generations of artists with MFA degrees would have to die out.....<BR>
but for many current university professorships, and administrative/curatorial positions, <BR>
and some technical/interdiciplinary work, having more <BR>
than a two year degree (and previously a one year M.A. had been enough) is<BR>
becoming "helpful," in some instances, necessary.<BR>
<BR>
So all this is the positive side of this development.<BR>
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Mary Anne<BR>
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On 1/11/07 7:53 PM, "twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu" <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu> wrote:<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> <BR>
> Hi Mary Anne and iDCers:<BR>
> <BR>
> Thanks to Mary Anne Staniszewski (and Margaret Morse) for getting this<BR>
> thread started. I've been watching these interdisciplinary PhDs develop<BR>
> over the past decade, first in the UK and then across North America. As a<BR>
> practicing artist it has always struck me as odd that artists would want<BR>
> to go to university for eight to ten years (BA or BFA, MA or MFA and PhD)<BR>
> before beginning their practice full-time. Of course an artist's practice<BR>
> is more synonymous than ever with information provision and research in<BR>
> this era, so there isn't the same disadvantage being in a university that<BR>
> there once was.<BR>
> <BR>
> I suppose there will be phds and PHDs in art praxis, in the same way there<BR>
> are different kinds of MFAs. For those of us who work with graduate<BR>
> students in three-year MFA programs, it is hard to fathom how people<BR>
> develop their work sufficiently in a two-year MFA. Young artists rushing<BR>
> to Brooklyn or LA or Toronto or London or Prague, sometime worry they will<BR>
> lose their street smarts in a three-year MFA. You know, they don't call it<BR>
> the 'terminal degree' for nothing. Artists functioning in a critical<BR>
> academic environment often become so self-conscious and tentative they can<BR>
> hardly go forward with their work (Marcel Duchamp said "art is a disease;"<BR>
> and sometimes university-based art students are cured by the time they get<BR>
> their diplomas).<BR>
> <BR>
> With PhDs in studio we will have a greater diversity of types or classes<BR>
> of artists: those who take their BFA to the city and start making art;<BR>
> those who take their MFA to the city and start making art; those few who<BR>
> take their MFA into a university where they balance their art making with<BR>
> teaching and service; those who take their PhD into a university to make<BR>
> art or conduct research and teach and provide service to a university; or<BR>
> those who take their PhDs to Brooklyn or LA or Toronto or London or Prague<BR>
> to start or continue to make art. (I guess most of them would be called<BR>
> "Doc" at the neighbourhood bar)<BR>
> <BR>
> Before becoming an academic I spent twenty years being an artist with very<BR>
> little contact with universities. I conducted research and had shows,<BR>
> made performances, published and interacted with other artists, writers,<BR>
> curators, historians, scientists, business and government workers. I<BR>
> moved in and out of several sectors, producing television, performing as a<BR>
> broadcaster, consulting for a broad range of organizations, complementing<BR>
> my work as an artist and writer. What I learned was that there were very<BR>
> few borders between disciplines outside of academia. I'm told that this<BR>
> is even more true today. Digital technologies and networks have knocked<BR>
> down so many doors. Interdiscipinary studies continue to try to break<BR>
> down disciplinary segregation in universities.<BR>
> <BR>
> The reason I'm working in a university is not to forge interdisciplinary<BR>
> links (although there are opportunities to do so), but to teach from an<BR>
> interdisciplinary perspective, to share what I've learned before and after<BR>
> becoming a teacher. I wouldn't have the right to teach if I wasn't<BR>
> employed as a university professor. On top of the 25,000+ MFAs issued in<BR>
> the USA and Canada over the past decade, we will now have hundreds of PhDs<BR>
> in hybrid forms of art making on top of the composers already holding PhDs<BR>
> scrambling for the right to teach. A PhD that can teach studio and history<BR>
> classes and land research grants and commingle with PhDs across the<BR>
> university might do pretty well in competition with the minions of MFAs.<BR>
> Job descriptions in university art and media programs are becoming<BR>
> impossibly complex.<BR>
> <BR>
> The more degrees you have the more comfortable you are being in an<BR>
> educational institution.<BR>
> <BR>
> While the boundaries between roles in a digital culture are fast<BR>
> disappearing, the gap between the street and the university is certainly<BR>
> getting wider. My question is are these PhD studio programs closing more<BR>
> doors than they are opening?<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> Tom Sherman<BR>
> <BR>
> <a href="http://www.kunstradio.at/2006A/H5N1en.html">http://www.kunstradio.at/2006A/H5N1en.html</a><BR>
> <BR>
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